North Korea Dreams of Turning Out the Lights

A satellite photo of Korea illustrates the South’s dependence on electricity.PHOTO:NASA

By

Henry F. Cooper

Mr. Cooper was the U.S. ambassador to the Defense and Space Talks during the Reagan administration and director of the Strategic Defense Initiative during the George H.W. Bush administration.

Conventional wisdom holds that it will be years before North Korea can credibly threaten the United States with a nuclear attack. Kim Jong Un’s scientists are still testing only low-yield nuclear weapons, the thinking goes, and have yet to place them on ballistic missiles capable of reaching America’s West Coast.

While its technological shortcomings have been well documented, North Korea’s desire to provoke a nuclear conflict with the U.S. should not be minimized or ignored. Pyongyang is surely close to getting it right.

For South Korea the danger is more immediate. According to physicist David Albright, the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, the North Koreanshave between 13 and 30 nuclear weaponsand can build as many as five more every year. If Mr. Kim were to detonate one of these bombs in the atmosphere 40 miles above Seoul, it could inflict catastrophic damage on South Korea’s electric power grid, leading to a prolonged blackout that could have deadly consequences.

ICON presented a powerful lecture given by Dr. James Carafano on The EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) Threat on Tuesday, May 17, 2016 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Dr. Carafano is a leading expert on national security and foreign policy challenges and is the Heritage Foundation’s Vice President for Heritage’s entire defense and foreign policy team.

An Emp attack against our country will be devastating as our electrical grid system will be damaged and the electronics in our cars, planes, computers, and hand- held devices will not be operable. Hospitals, police, fire and rescue stations will not be able to respond and our money supply will be curtailed as banks will not be able to conduct any business without electricity. And the worst, with communication capability down, we won’t be able to reach out to our loved ones to find out if they are safe. There will be massive deaths – medical devices such as pacemakers will no longer operate, medications will be unavailable and within a week or so, our food supply will be drastically affected which will result in starvation of masses of people.

What is our government doing to protect our electrical grid since this threat has been known to exist for many years? Tragically, very little. It is now up to us, as citizens, to make our concerns about this threat known to our government (both state and national) and demand that they begin to harden our electrical grid system. Their not protecting us is gross negligence.

The possible catastrophic damage from an EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) attack has been known for decades and yet very little has been done by our government to protect our country by hardening our electrical grid and damage proofing our various means of transportation . This article warns of North Korea’s latest satellite launching as a potential danger to us by an EMP as we are very vulnerable.

For more information on this threat, ICON Lectures’ May 17 presentation will be on “The EMP Threat” given by James Jay Carafano, PhD, at 200 South Elliott Road, Chapel Hill at 7 p.m. Dr. Carafano has the responsibility for the Heritage Foundation’s entire defense and foreign policy team. For tickets and more information, please go to www.iconlectureseries.com Nancy

North Korea Poses EMP Threat

The nightmare scenario of an America sent back centuries in time before electricity, refrigeration, and smart phones has grown unnervingly closer with the presence of two North Korean satellites with orbits over a blissfully unaware American populace and an Obama administration indifferent to the apocalyptic threat of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

On Feb. 7, North Korea launched a second satellite, the KMS-4, to join their KMS-3 satellite launched in December of 2012. Inan articlein the WashingtonTimeson April 24, R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Peter Vincent Fry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security as well as director of the Nuclear Strategy Forum, both congressional advisory boards, warned of the dangers of an apocalyptic EMP attack that these and similar satellites pose:

Both satellites now are in south polar orbits, evading many U.S. missile defense radars and flying over the United States from the south, where our defenses are limited. Both satellites — if nuclear armed — could make an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that could blackout the U.S. electric grid for months or years, thereby killing millions.

Technologically, such an EMP attack is easy — since the weapon detonates at high-altitude, in space, no shock absorbers, heat shield, or vehicle for atmospheric re-entry is necessary. Since the radius of the EMP is enormous, thousands of kilometers, accuracy matters little. Almost any nuclear weapon will do.

Please scroll down to read the U.S. News & World Report article entitled “

The EMP Threat is Real and Growing” which discusses a possibly catastrophic threat to this country that very few people are aware of.

To inform the public on this possible disaster, ICON Lectures will be presenting James Jay Carafano, PhD, who will be speaking on “The EMP Threat” on Tuesday, May 17, 2016 at 7 pm at Extraordinary Ventures, 200 South Elliott Road, Chapel Hill. Dr. Carafano is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges and is the Heritage Foundation’s Vice President and is responsible for Heritage’s entire defense and foreign policy team. He is also a 25-year Army veteran with a doctorate from Georgetown University and is also a West Point graduate.

Building defenses against the electromagnetic threat has never been more urgent – or more doable.

Ongoing crises make it difficult for policymakers to devote sufficient attention to electromagnetic threats, which are less prominent but potentially catastrophic. Events that reflect our growing vulnerability to these threats often slip quickly from the front page, as did the cyberattack against Sony Pictures. Others, such as solar storms across Alaska in March and the accidental power station explosion in April that left Washington, D.C. in the dark, go mostly unnoticed. And even events that dominate headlines, like the Iran nuclear agreement, don’t tell the whole story about electromagnetic threats. As a nuclear threshold state, Iran may quickly race to build a bomb that could be used to conduct a devastating electromagnetic attack against the United States.

‘Death to America’ by Other Means

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: Think about everything in your life that operates on electricity. Not just the lights, your computer, your cellphone, your television, your radio. Car and truck batteries would be fried as well. Get used to walking to the grocery store?

Why bother? The food there would all be gone in a day. And with no functioning trucks, or railways, or planes, no new deliveries would be coming any time soon. Surely the military would be delivering rescue relief promptly, right? But even America’s military operates on electricity. So does America’s agriculture.

Your only hope would be that you have stored some seeds. Clear a field, plant them, and pray for rain. Indeed, put out some water receptacles and really start praying. America’s water supply runs on electricity as well.

If you or a member of your family needs medical help, you can kiss them goodbye. No ambulances would be working either. But no hospitals or doctors’ offices would be open anyway. They are not getting new supply deliveries anytime soon either. If you rely on prescription drugs for any treatments, don’t expect any new deliveries.

“Iran is a small country,” our president sagely tells us. “They could not possibly defeat us.” The small and shrinking number of knowledgeable Americans know that he is wrong, and surely he must know that.

EMP stands for “electromagnetic pulse.” Since the dawn of the nuclear age, scientists have known of the vulnerability. Though many have tried to warn the American people of the danger, in the modern age of party-controlled media, the message still has not broken through.

In an August 12, 2014 commentary by former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and Peter Vincent Pry, a member of the 2008 Presidential EMP Commission, the Wall Street Journal tried to sound the alarm bell. Woolsey and Pry wrote:

In a recent letter to investors, billionaire hedge-fund manager Paul Singer warned that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, is “the most significant threat” to the U.S. and our allies in the world. He’s right. Our food and water supplies, communications, banking, law enforcement, etc. all depend on the electric grid.Yet until recently little attention has been paid to the ease of generating EMPs by detonating a nuclear weapon in orbit above the U.S., and thus bringing our civilization to a cold, dark halt.” [Emphasis added.]

There is some very sobering information in this article. Congress needs to AGAIN take up the issue of protecting our electric grid. Please call your representatives to urge them to do so. (From this article: Congress also has failed to act on the plans of its own EMP commission to protect the electric grid and other civilian infrastructure that depends on a viable electric grid—such as communications, transportation, banking—that are essential to the economy. In recent years, the GRID Act, the Shield Act, and the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act have gained bipartisan and even unanimous support in the House, yet they died in the Senate.) Nancy

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Threat to Melt the Electric Grid – An EMP Strike

By

Henry F. Cooper And

Peter Vincent Pry Amb. Cooper is the former director of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Mr. Pry is executive director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security and served in the EMP Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

May 1, 2015

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: At an April 7 Pentagon news conference, Norad Commander Adm. William Gortney noted that Norad is going back underground “because of the very nature of the way that Cheyenne Mountain’s built. It’s EMP-hardened.” He explained that North Korea now has mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles, the KN-08, armed with nuclear warheads, that can strike the U.S. While the KN-08 is inaccurate, it could be used to launch a high-altitude nuclear EMP attack………North Korea have successfully orbited satellites on south-polar trajectories that appear to practice evading U.S. missile defenses, and at optimum altitudes to make a surprise EMP attack. The U.S. has no ballistic-missile early-warning radars or ground-based interceptors facing south and would be blind to a nuclear warhead orbited as a satellite from a southern trajectory. The missile defense plans were oriented during the Cold War for a northern strike from the Soviet Union, and they have not been adapted for the changing threats.

The Pentagon is moving the headquarters for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) back into Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colo., a decade after having largely vacated the site.

Why the return? Because the enormous bunker in the hollowed-out mountain, built to survive a Cold War-era nuclear conflict, can also resist an electromagnetic-pulse attack, or EMP. America’s military planners recognize the growing threat from an EMP attack by bad actors around the world, in particular North Korea and Iran.

An EMP strike, most likely from the detonation of a nuclear weapon in space, would destroy unprotected military and civilian electronics nationwide, blacking out the electric grid and other critical infrastructure for months or years. The staggering human cost of such a catastrophic attack is not difficult to imagine.

The primary headquarters for Norad, which provides early warning and command and control for the defense of the U.S. against nuclear attack, has for a decade been at nearby Peterson Air Force Base. Critical Norad operations are being moved back into Cheyenne Mountain, and the Pentagon recently awarded a $700 million contract to Raytheon RTN 1.04 % to upgrade electronics through 2020. (more…)